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<h2><a name="SECTION009120000000000000000">
7.1.2 Parsing email messages</a>
</h2>
<a name="module-email.parser"></a>

<p>
Message object structures can be created in one of two ways: they can be
created from whole cloth by instantiating <tt class="class">Message</tt> objects and
stringing them together via <tt class="method">attach()</tt> and
<tt class="method">set_payload()</tt> calls, or they can be created by parsing a flat text
representation of the email message.

<p>
The <tt class="module">email</tt> package provides a standard parser that understands
most email document structures, including MIME documents.  You can
pass the parser a string or a file object, and the parser will return
to you the root <tt class="class">Message</tt> instance of the object structure.  For
simple, non-MIME messages the payload of this root object will likely
be a string containing the text of the message.  For MIME
messages, the root object will return <code>True</code> from its
<tt class="method">is_multipart()</tt> method, and the subparts can be accessed via
the <tt class="method">get_payload()</tt> and <tt class="method">walk()</tt> methods.

<p>
There are actually two parser interfaces available for use, the classic
<tt class="class">Parser</tt> API and the incremental <tt class="class">FeedParser</tt> API.  The classic
<tt class="class">Parser</tt> API is fine if you have the entire text of the message in
memory as a string, or if the entire message lives in a file on the file
system.  <tt class="class">FeedParser</tt> is more appropriate for when you're reading the
message from a stream which might block waiting for more input (e.g. reading
an email message from a socket).  The <tt class="class">FeedParser</tt> can consume and parse
the message incrementally, and only returns the root object when you close the
parser<a name="tex2html38"
  href="#foot20420"><sup>7.1</sup></a>.

<p>
Note that the parser can be extended in limited ways, and of course
you can implement your own parser completely from scratch.  There is
no magical connection between the <tt class="module">email</tt> package's bundled
parser and the <tt class="class">Message</tt> class, so your custom parser can create
message object trees any way it finds necessary.

<p>
<br><hr><h4>Footnotes</h4>
<dl>
<dt><a name="foot20420">...
parser</a><A
 href="module-email.parser.html#tex2html38"><sup>7.1</sup></a></dt>
<dd>As of email package version 3.0, introduced in
Python 2.4, the classic <tt class="class">Parser</tt> was re-implemented in terms of the
<tt class="class">FeedParser</tt>, so the semantics and results are identical between the two
parsers.

</dd>
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<li><a href="node148.html">7.1.2.1 FeedParser API</a>
<li><a href="node149.html">7.1.2.2 Parser class API</a>
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